Plot
Prologue Richard Sitterson and Steve Hadley talk about Hadley's wife baby proofing the house. Wendy Lin arrives and tells them that Stockholm failed and now it's just them and Japan. Japan is number one and never fails, while they are number two - "we try harder," Hadley says. They leave for the control room. Passing the Harbinger As Dana Polk packs for a trip, she finds a sketch of a professor she had been seeing. Her friend Jules Louden arrives and she and her boyfriend Curt Vaughan introduce Dana to Holden McCrea, one of Curt's teammates on the football team. They wait for Marty Mikalski to arrive and then they go in their RV to Curt's uncle's cabin in the woods. Before they reach the cabin, they pull over at an old gas station, where they meet Mordecai. Mordecai tells them that they'll have enough gas to get to the cabin, "but getting back, that's your concern." Entering the Cabin The group passes through a tunnel and then finds the cabin. In Holden's room, he removes a painting and finds a one-way mirror to Dana's room. After he tells Dana, they decide to switch rooms. Choosing the Monster During a game of "Truth and Dare" where new personality changes began to develop in the group, a cellar door is opened remotely. Inside, the group find various strange artifacts and despite Marty's suggestion to head back upstairs, they began to investigate. Dana calls them all over to read from a diary of one of the members of The Buckner Family, the cabin's original owners. They come across a latin incantation at the bottom and despite insistence from Marty not to read it; they do so and unwittingly summon up the zombified Buckners. The Death of the Whore Affected by mood-altering drugs applied by the underground technicians, Curt and Jules go off into the woods and begin to undress. The underground technicians focus intently on the exposure of Jules' breasts, raucously at first but later soberly observing that her disrobing for the audience is an essential part of the ritual. "Gotta keep the customer satisfied." As Curt and Jules begin to make love, the Buckner Family attacks. They stab Jules' hand and wound Curt in the shoulder. They hold Curt and make him watch as they cut Jules' throat (and eventually behead her) with a saw. The technicians mark her passing with a prayer: "This we offer in humility and fear, for the blessed peace of your eternal slumber, as it ever was." Splitting Up The underground technicians pull a lever operating a complex machine that pours sacrificial blood into the grooves of a stone carving. Marty is in his room smoking pot and reading a picture book. He hears a mysterious whisper suggesting he go for a walk. He is disoriented and cries out, "You think I'm a puppet, huh?... I'm the boss of my own brain so give it up!" However he relents and goes for a walk. Just outside the cabin, Marty unzips and begins to relieve himself while Patience Buckner stalks him in the background. Suddenly, Curt grabs Marty and urges him back into the house, where Curt tells the group that Jules is dead. A Buckner zombie appears in the doorway and tosses Jules' severed head into the room. They push him out and bar the door. Curt outlines a desperate plan for everyone to work together, sealing the house against intruders -- the kind of practical things that a horror-movie audience would urge the onscreen victims to do. Underground, Sitterson releases gas into the cabin that disorients the group. Curt and Holden now agree that it would be best for everyone to split up. "We can cover more ground that way." Only Marty is incredulous. The Buckners begin to attack the house and everyone runs to his/her own room, where the technicians lock them in. Discovering the Fourth Wall Reaching to close the window in his room, Marty knocks over a lamp and breaks it. Glancing at the pieces, he discovers a spy camera was hidden in the lamp, and locates the signal feed embedded in the wall. He pauses for a moment and exclaims, "I'm on a reality TV show!" Realizing they are on the verge of being discovered, the technicians prepare to gas Marty. But Judah Buckner attacks and pulls Marty out through the window. Marty puts up a spirited fight, but Buckner stabs him with a trowel and drags him away screaming. Offscreen, blood splatters with the sickening squish of the trowel striking flesh. In light of Marty's death, Sitterson and Hadley pull the next lever and pour another ounce of blood into the strange vial mechanism. As this occurs, a brief but heavy earthquake shakes the area, confusing the kids and surprising the facility workers below. Escaping the Cabin Mother Buckner attacks Dana in her room, reaching through the window. Dana is locked in and calls for help. Holden breaks the one-way mirror between his room and Dana's, and helps Dana get through. When the Buckner Zombies begin to attack Holden's room, Holden and Dana lift a bed to block the window and discover beneath the bed a trap door. They call to Curt, who is in his room next door, to find a way into the basement so they may escape. Holden and Dana climb through the trap door and into a room that Dana recognizes it as the Dark Room referenced in Patience Buckner's diary. Knives, axes, traps and other weapons lie everywhere. The Matthew Buckner attacks Holden from the trap door opening above, but Dana grabs a crowbar, jams it through his eye, and then stabs him with a knife until he is incapacitated. Sitterson flips a control switch that applies a small electric shock to the knife handle so that Dana drops it without noticing. Curt appears from an adjoining basement room and leads the group outside to the Rambler. They drive off in the Rambler, failing to notice a bloody handprint on the door. Crash and Burn Sitterson watches the video feed from Kyoto as the Japanese schoolgirls unite against the Japanese Floaty Girl and sing an incantation that defeats the ghost and reduces her spirit to a frog in a bowl. Hadley, Sitterson and Wendy Lin commiserate on Japan's failure ("Zero fatalities, total wash"), leaving North America as the only viable scenario for a successful ritual. Glancing at the monitor, Hadley realizes that the RV is about to escape through the mountain tunnel and that the expected cave-in has not occurred. They urgently contact Demolition and learn of a "glitch" and communications failure. Sitterson sprints to the Demolition control room and patches the wires at the last second to detonate explosives for the cave-in. Curt is forced to back the Rambler out the tunnel the way they entered. With the tunnel blocked, a narrow but very deep ravine lies between the victims and their escape. Curt attempts to jump across the ravine on his motorcycle, intending to get help and return. But he crashes into the invisible force field and falls to his death. Holden and Dana drive the RV towards the cabin, hoping to find another exit road, but a Buckner Zombie (who had been hiding in the Rambler) fatally stabs Holden while he's driving. The RV veers off the road and crashes into a lake. "The Virgin's death is optional" As Dana fights to escape the submerged RV and swims to the surface of the lake, the underground technicians celebrate the successful completion of the ritual. Truman asks how the ritual can be complete when he can see that Dana is still alive. Hadley explains that the Virgin's death is optional, so long as she outlives the other victims and suffers in the ordeal. Dana climbs onto the pier and is immediately attacked by Matthew Buckner. Their struggle is displayed on monitors all over the underground control room where the employees of The Organization have gathered for cocktails. While Dana is being beaten and tossed around onscreen around them, various employees discuss overtime pay, hit on each other, and relish their success. Sitterson happily greets the Demolition team, but they remain defensive about the near-miss with the cave-in. They reiterate to Sitterson that it wasn't their fault, that the delay was caused by a "power rerout from upstairs". The Fool Survives Going Down System Purge Meeting the Director The End of the World Category:Plot